All Winter We Got Carried Away
by RainingMonday
Summary: Two unborn children meet in Heaven … as one set of would-be parents heal and the other find their way back to each other, courtesy of a supernatural influence. My response to the finale. Meredith/Derek and Mark/Addison with hints of other characters.


.:-:. All Winter We Got Carried Away .:-:.

**So, this is my response to the season finale. Once I got the idea of MerDer and Maddison's lost children meeting in Heaven, I couldn't get it out until I wrote this. It is not meant to be religious, just based on the concept that children go somewhere when they die. Mainly MerDer and Maddison, a little implied Burke/Cristina, but only because of context (you'll see what I mean). The title is a line from the song Death and All His Friends by Coldplay. Tell me what you think at the end!**

.:-:.

My toes curl over the edge, into thin air, torn by breezes from the world below, some simple air, some prayers, some curses.

I can sense her behind me, red curls blowing out of their ribbons courtesy of the wind, but she doesn't reprimand me or remind me of the caution that needs to be exercised and I don't turn to look. She understands the melancholy longing, the yearning that eats away at souls, the unfounded, inerasable desire. Still, her iridescent aura turns pale yellow, synonymous for nervousness, as I peer down through the depths of the clouds, trying to catch a glimpse of them.

"Nora!" she whispers, voice caught by the tendrils of rushing air as I lean ever more forward, wishing, not for the first time, that I wielded the power to permanently scatter Seattle's persistent cloud cover. There are some here, perfect, flawless beings, that might be able to do so, but their impeccability lies in their unwavering ability to resist such temptations.

"I'm not going to interfere," I murmur. "I just want to see them. I _know _you've peeked at your parents, Evangeline Sloan, and I've never seen mine." My hair, strands of glistening midnight, swing out over space as I crane, trying to observe the happenings on Earth.

Evangeline joins me at the shore of Heaven and Earth, the thin silk of her dress whipping around her slim legs, and we link arms, joined in our unadulterated, endless longing as we search. Finally, Evie exclaims, "Look! They're together!" and I peer past the point of her delicate finger, down into the crowded hospital in which our mothers lay.

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Everything is blurred at first, as if she is viewing it through frosted glass or rippling, distorting bathwater, so she is first aware of feelings, the firm mattress supporting her back, the warmth of a human hand upon her forearm. Next is colors, brilliant vermilion, pastel and beige, and sounds, the rhythmic beating of her heart, signaling she lived through the hell of the past twelve hours.

Meredith's lips pop open uncertainly, unsure how she became the patient in hospital gown and tubes and wires, when she wasn't shot, though not for lack of trying. "Derek?" she croaks illogically, momentarily still immersed in the bliss of sleep that soothes all wounds. But she knows, in her heart, that it isn't Derek, Derek's hands are larger and callused, Derek doesn't have red hair or wear expensive, intoxicating perfume.

"Welcome back," Addison says softly as Meredith blinks yet again, confused by the redheaded Los Angeles resident's presence.

"W-what happened?"

"You collapsed, on your way to see Derek. I don't know if you knew, but -"

"I know the baby is gone," she says harshly. "So please don't …"

"My professional diagnosis is that the loss of blood and lack of sufficient nutrition and rest caused you to faint," Addison informs her gently. "Not that any of those were really under your control."

"Why are you here? No offense, but we did not need a world class neonatal whatever to make that diagnosis." Meredith is devastated over the loss of her child, although its presence was just barely confirmed, and her heart-wrenching sorrow leaks out in her speak, although Addison isn't put off by her rudeness.

"Meredith, Derek and I may not be married any longer, but I still care about him – as a friend, of course. In addition to that, Richard ask that I come, he's a little short on surgeons, and Amelia, Derek's little sister, was staying at my house, so it only made sense to accompany her."

"Is she with Derek now?" She doesn't want him alone.

"Mark and Amelia are in there with him right now," Addison soothes. "I practically had to fight Cristina for the honor of sitting by your beside, though." A small, ironic smile tugs at the corner of the perfect strawberry lips.

An involuntary sigh escapes, she really has no argument for that, but the thought of Addison, of anyone, wielding an ultrasound to examine her empty uterus makes her kind of nauseous.

"You were crying," she observes, and wants to repeat the rest of her admonishment of April, although in that case it was so uncalled for that rue keeps the words inside.

"Everyone's been crying," Addison counters. "And, if you must know, a member of my practice whom we were all very close to … died three days ago, orphaning his seven-year-old daughter. In addition, I operated on the daughter of my best friend, save her and her baby, give the child I considered my son back to his mother, and possibly ruined a friendship by confusing lust and temptation with love. So …"

"Sorry," Meredith offers blandly.

"No," Addison exhales, pinching the bridge of her nose, "I shouldn't have – what you went through, what you just went through, gives you a free pass for at least a week."

"I guess it's bad all around."

"You could say that."

"I had already picked out a name." Meredith chokes a bit on the sob as she expels it, but continues, "When Cristina and I were sitting in the closet, waiting, I thought about it, to distract myself. I never did pick out a boy's name, but I thought Nora, for a girl …"

"Nora Shepherd. It's beautiful," Addison offers. "I always liked Evangeline …"

"Were you …"

"Once," the other woman admits as her smile turns even more self-deprecating. "I was stupid and selfish and I only could only think of the baby in terms of its father – who I was furious with at the time – so, I … terminated the pregnancy."

Meredith cannot think of any response to that, because Addison is near tears again and even though she willingly gave up her baby, see seems to feel the aching loss just as acutely as Mer does right now. "Evangeline Shepherd would have sounded nice as well."

"Not Shepherd. Sloan," Addison admits and the anguish in their beryl-hued eyes, she realizes, is perhaps not so different after all.

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"Nora! Evangeline!" someone cries more urgently this time, but when I turn, nothing is amiss. Smiling, laughing, peaceful souls float by, some carrying baskets of the freshest goods, others instruments in fine-fingered hands, books tucked under white satin robes, freshly picked flowers that don't die when separated from the translucent ground beneath our feet, their glowing stems held tight.

There's only Zander Burke, rich coffee skin throwing gorgeous, iridescent rainbows under the sun as he observes us. I wonder if he was watching his mother during the shooting, torn between the worth of her life and wanting her for himself, up here, with us. But perhaps I read too far into it – Zander doesn't watch his parents as obsessively as me and Evangeline do, perhaps because they are not so intimately linked, perhaps because their thoughts are not often on him, as my mother's are on me.

"What?" We laugh carelessly, spinning ever closer to the rim and the tantalizing space beyond. "You can't die if you're already dead," Evangeline adds.

"You know you're not supposed to," Zander reminds us gently. I do not have the capacity to feel jealousy; here in this paradise, nor annoyance, so instead I muse, turn over in my head what it would be like to walk away, to let my parents live their lives as he is able.

I know I am not capable, though, just as Evangeline is not, we are both unreasonably drawn to them and their messy quadrangle of familiarity.

"A star is being born, close enough to see this time," he informs us when we fail to rise, knowing this will catch my interest. Evangeline, who would be nearly three on Earth, just learning to say ever-more complicated sentences and draw blobs with arms and legs that resembled her parents, has seen many starts born already, and her aura bursts powder blue, excited but calm, content. One traded look reveals to her my enthusiasm, however, and she skips quickly away from her view of the clouds, pausing only to catch Zander's hand.

Her eyes say later, so I complete the chain, grabbing Zander's free limb as we join the parading, ethereal souls.

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He's pale, like Death, that sly, sinister crooner that pick-pockets your life the moment you turn your head. But Derek Shepherd isn't dead, his skin may be cold from blood loss, and whiter than the birds that dart above the Puget Sound, and hooked up to half a million machine's Meredith's rational brain likely knows the function of, but he isn't dead.

She offered her life, and inadvertently her child's, to insure that.

Addison pushes her wheelchair right up beside her husband, so she can run a hand through those coal curls (she had dreamt of those dreamy locks being replicated in their child not long ago), press a hand to his unshaven, handsome face. Each breath is a incredible miracle.

"Derek," she chokes, and then she's crying again, and his arm is wrapped weakly around her shoulders, holding her close, as if such a grip can defy even death. He doesn't know yet, what they have lost.

They sit like that, for small hours and endless minutes, for unmeasured time, and eventually she becomes aware of the girl on Derek's other side, maybe a few years younger than her. _Amelia_, she realizes belatedly as the other Shepherd offers her a weak, trembling smile. A sharper angle of twisted neck reveals Mark and Addison still present as well, both immediately directing their gazes away from each other as they realize they are under scrutiny. A smile quirks her lips, watching them try to deny the inevitable, and Derek catches on and grins as well.

"There's something I have to tell you," she mutters, eyes suddenly downcast as her hand naturally finds the flat plane of her stomach, the spot under which her ravaged womb lies. Concern clouds sky blue and Derek's hand clutches hers more tightly, as if by that force alone he can told her together.

"Remember … how I said I had things to tell you?" she asks softly, and he nods, eyes intent on her face, his unconditional love like a soothing balm to her sorrow. "You were in a mood, a work mood, so I thought when we got home I could … but then there was a shooter and you got shot and …"

"You're rambling," Derek reminds her with an endearing smile.

_Only to spare you the pain for a few seconds longer_, she thinks. "Right. I … I was pregnant, Derek."

"You're … wait, you _were _pregnant?"

"I lost the baby," she admits in an anguished whisper before succumbing to tears on the uninjured side of his chest, feeling the steady beat of his heart and the lingering smell of soap and shaving cream and cologne and _Derek_.

"Oh, Mer," he sighs into her hair. "I am so, so sorry. Sorry that you had to go through that alone. Sorry that I wasn't there. Sorry that we will never see that beautiful baby with your eyes and my hair come into this world. I would give _anything_ …" and then he's crying too, each sob causing his chest to contract painfully, but he still holds her because it's them against the world.

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"Do you think it's weird?" Evangeline asks, small white feet swinging over the cusp of Heaven as she watches, hands threaded through a mop of sandy-brown fur she calls Doc.

"What?" I ask, looking up from the chain of flowers my fingers nimbly weave, independent of my will. They fascinate me, like moon-spun spiders, longer and more delicate than they looked when I was seven. Today, if increments of can even be measured here, I chose to look sixteen and had spent most of my time comparing my reflection in a silvery puddle to my mother's face. Now her head is turned into my father's chest as they slumber and though I look like him, I more resemble her and I quickly became bored.

"To watch my parents make love?" Evie continues, a note of hesitation in her voice. "I mean, I know on Earth it would, but I … I just like seeing that they still care about each other, and seeing her eyes close as he kisses her."

I join her and turn her face gently away as her father pulls the silken sheath from her mother's body and their bodies fuse more passionately and they share butterfly-light kisses on exposed shoulders.

_Why do you think they didn't want me?_ Her cerulean eyes ask, but I have no answer for her. Her mother thinks of her often, that I know, with guilt and regret, and her father tries to picture her when he lies awake and the rest of the world sleeps, wondering if she would have looked like her half-sister or nephew.

_Why do you think she miscarried?_ I refrain from asking Evangeline, because although she was here above when it happened, she will never tell me, never subject me to that pain.

I take her hand, and together we watch, two unborn children that could have been raised as sisters, if only we had been born.

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Time passes.

The long stretches spent watching my parents slowly dwindle, but I am there to watch them step, hand and hand, into their new house, marveling at each inch of hardwood and arcing ceiling and open windows that belong to them. I see them sneak down to City Hall one day, during their lunch, and officiate their marriage, although to them it has been so since the beginning. And sometimes I peek in, whisper in my mother's ear which herb to add to the spaghetti sauce when her cooking skills fail her, watch my father unwrap someone's skull in order to repair their brain.

We do other things as well, though, Evangeline and I. I know the secret engagement of Mark and Addison is on her mind, however, whenever a smile lights her face as we sit under the Tree of Life, watching sunshine dance between our fingers, or run through never-ending fields of periwinkle flowers as snow falls softly, coating our hair with a dusting of frozen crystals.

I meet my grandmother, Ellis, who tells me funny stories about my mother and of the Anatomy Jane doll that would have been mine, and my grandfather, Christopher, who is the spitting image of my father and can play the guitar better than anyone I've ever met. Dell, a friend of Evangeline's mother, takes special care to look after her, whispers how she always loved babies and seemed to regret not having one of her own.

There is no sadness here, they say, although I'm not sure they've ever looked into Evangeline Sloan's eyes.

Still, we go on, as everything must, keeping one eyes on our beloved hospital, occasionally skipping behind our parents as they stroll through evenings in the park.

And when the time comes, we join hands and blow our baby brothers down to Earth.

.:-:.


End file.
